Friday, July 11, 2014

Our last day out in the wide sea, we tossed flowers overboard in an impromptu ritual of gratitude for our year on the ocean.

We've been home two weeks now and, though it still feels like we're in the honeymoon of the transition-seeing old friends, celebrating with family, hardly any actual unpacking.
I'm not going to ignore the many stories I haven't shared yet but for today, I'm picking up in Astoria.

Have you met our mascot yet? Meet Stinky Monkey. He likes to ride in new places around the boat and sometime takes a flying leap just for thrills.
After a quick overnight in Astoria, we spent a couple of delightful days working our way up the Columbia to St. Helens, our final destination. Our autopilot doesn't like to steer in flat water so we all took turns at the helm and the girls got a few experiences they'd missed on the trip. Meira discovered the joys of steering with one's feet and Hannah steered the boat into and out of the city dock at Rainier, where we spent our last night of the journey.

Our first day out of Astoria, we had some heavy mist that threatened to turn nasty, so I closed up the boat and took pictures through the companionway. But the weather cleared and we all enjoyed our time navigating these familiar waters.

We planned our return for late afternoon so our family could meet us easily. On our last little hop from Rainier to St. Helens, we blasted some dance party favorites and dodged river traffic. This tug and double barge got way too close for comfort because...

...this big guy needed the deepest part of the channel.

There was a tug coming the other way too around this time but we made it through smiling.

After 2 days of travel up the river, we pulled into St. Helens the last Friday in June during the only rain squall we traveled in our entire trip.

Bryan hung our flags (though at the last minute, we couldn't find Mexico!) and LiLo came in with all colors flying.

Our entire time in the ocean was dry. We had rain in port a few days, but not a single day at sea. I'm an Oregonian, so I'm going to just say that again. We sailed for 10 months without rain pouring down on our heads. I can almost not believe it.

But of course, our last 2 days in the Columbia, we had mist and drizzle and then, as we pulled into the city dock in St. Helens, an honest-to-goodness downpour.

Our families were waiting for us with umbrellas and wet smiles and our nephew jumped aboard and squelched below, saying "Welcome back to the heart of the Pacific Northwest!"

Moving the little boat for the last time!

We went up to a local friend's house for warm coffee and drip-drying and rainbows and then drove back down to the waterfront, where we had dinner with a whole bunch of sailing friends from the delightful St. Helens Sailing Club.

It was surreal and delightful to see them all in person. We enjoyed answering questions from the knowledgeable group of sailors who understood us when we sprinkled our answers with sailing lingo. Bryan's brother showed up a little late. He'd driven all the way down from the Seattle area to welcome us...and then he turned right around and drove all the way back that night. This was the triumphant return we'd dreamt about so many times.
The next morning, we shifted the boat over to our new slip at the St. Helens Marina and moved home.

It really was almost as simple as I make it sound. We packed up a bunch of necessities--clothes, toiletries, electronics, chargers, food--and shut up the boat. As Bryan and I walked away with the last load, unexpected tears escaped. He stopped for a moment to thank LiLo, a personal ritual. He pressed his hand to her cabin and murmured, "You're a good boat, LiLo. Thank you for keeping us safe."
I walked ahead of him to the end of the dock and looked back to see him stopped, staring back at our slip, at this hunk of wood, glass, glue, and metal that carried us faithfully there and back again. It's hard to believe that boats don't have a personality.

The drive home was fun, surreal, exciting.

In the afternoon, we pulled into our driveway for the first time in about a year. Bryan told us all we were going to dock stern-to and the girls teased about needing to hop out for lines and fenders. We backed in without nearly the usual trouble that causes and left everything in the car in our rush to get inside and look around. Our renters had left a few days before, but my sister-in-law had stopped by and, with some help from my niece and nephew, had decorated a welcome-home banner and left us notes on all the mirrors, food in the fridge, and treats on the counter.

With a fresh burst of energy, we unloaded the car, brought in and set up the beds, and started the long process of dealing with our boxes.

Stinky Monkey has work to do here at home too

The next few days we were busy with church, family visits, and the 4th of July. We had several get-togethers at various houses and even hosted a couple of people overnight in our barely-serviceable home. We did loads of laundry without quarters or a hike, took long, free showers, and caught up on sleep.

Surprisingly, the house doesn't feel enormous. I think during the 10 years we spent living there, we developed an unshakeable muscle memory about how long it takes to walk across the dining room, where the dishes are in the kitchen, how far one needs to bend over the bathroom sink.
I caught up with my sisters-in-law from Bryan's family with pedicures, lunch out, and an afternoon of sangria and laughter.

And we spent the 4th of July with both of our families, parade-watching, barbecue-eating, wood-working, and fireworks-admiring.

My dad is helping the girls with the redwood we picked up in Crescent City

I missed this cute car at the car show but here it is on my mother-in-law's road, complete with watermelon!

We haven't stopped enjoying the wildlife we see.

And we took a break from unpacking to walk to the nearby Mexican grocery store for taco fixings. Can you call them "street tacos" if you eat them in your woodsy backyard?

I've noticed all sorts of odd things. The smells here are so strong after a year of sea air. The freeway smells like metal and oil, the valley smells like green and brown, fertility and new growth.
I expected all sorts of emotions and events during this transition. But here's one I didn't see coming. My skin is falling off. At the pedicurists, of course, but also in the car, the shower; even at my writers' group, I looked down and noticed the dry skin from my forearm leaving tiny flakes on my black pants. I don't know if it's the climate, the water, or what. Maybe it's as if my body wants to shed this year as quickly as possible. Or maybe just a visible reminder that, here or there, at sea or at home, I am becoming a new person every day.

Friday, June 27, 2014

I'm writing this while sailing up the
Columbia River. I've been waiting to say those words for so long, it
doesn't seem possible that they're finally true. The water is
beautifully flat and the wind a perfect beam-reach. Of course, it's
also gray and drizzly and our auto pilot doesn't like to steer
straight in flat water (what?!) so we're all taking turns on this,
our last full day of the trip. We've done a lot since we left San
Francisco, unsure if we could make it around Cape Mendocino, much
less all the way home. We've stopped in several ports, met family,
seen Redwoods, and made friends. Stuff went wrong, usually at the
worst possible time. Our engine heater broke. Our last night at sea,
the weather didn't live up to its billing, and some of our deck
hardware still leaks so the floor is wet and squishy. But the trees
are green and lush and the river is so peaceful. Our surroundings
accurately reflect our mixed emotions about the end of this grand
adventure.

I plan to keep posting with stories
from the journey and would like to share a bit about our transition
back as well. First, here's the regular update...

We spent our last day in Pittsburg
finishing up the engine repairs (of course, one never knows at the
time whether this fix will be the last one) and getting ready to make
an attempt at heading north again. Dock neighbors invited us over to
watch California Chrome's run at the Triple Crown in the Belmont
Stakes and Meira and I took them up on their offer.

The forecast still predicted the
possibility of a cape rounding late the next week. If we were going
to make it there in time, we needed to leave right away. So we took
off on the midnight ebb, hoping to run at least most of the way back
to San Francisco Bay before the flood tide forced us to stop. The
winds hadn't died down like they usually do at night so Bryan steered
by hand in the bucking sea. He kept an eye on the chart and developed
a rhythm of spotting the buoys—flash from the red, flash from the
green, duck behind the dodger from the spray of a wave. Flash. Flash.
Duck. Flash. Flash. Duck. Each buoy has its own light pattern,
sometimes blinking every second, sometimes 2.5 or 4. In a tight
channel, in a bouncy boat, 4 seconds feels like a long time between
orienting flashes. The V-berth flew up and down and I did too,
willing myself to relax and get some sleep. About 3 am, I heard the
unmistakable sound of anchor chain running out over the anchor
roller. I knew we were motoring in relatively shallow water and flung
myself out of bed, expecting at any moment to feel the boat lurch as
the anchor hit bottom and dug in. I threw on my foulweather jacket
and called up into the cockpit, “I'm pretty sure we just lost our
anchor!” I'd been sleeping in the sundress I'd worn all day but we
didn't have time for me to put on warmer clothes. I tossed on my
lifejacket and tethered in, steering the boat in the windy channel
while Bryan worked his way forward to check out the situation. The
anchor had come loose and, yes, had set itself in the river bottom.
Bryan pulled hard and got it back on board. I breathed a sigh of
relief as he walked back to the cockpit. But then. “Well, I got the
anchor back up, but we have a problem. The bowline is down and
wrapped around our prop shaft.” We're always really careful when we
tie up our dock lines, for this very reason. Somehow, one of them had
come loose anyway and fallen overboard. We think that it hooked the
anchor as it went and when it pulled taut, popped the anchor free of
its tie-downs. We'd heard the engine choke but it never quit, so the
prop itself must have bit through the line and kept turning. We
couldn't run out with a line around our shaft, though, so we prepped
for an attempt to free it. I put on some pants and a warm hat, almost
certain we would have to sail back to the dock in the dark and miss
our weather window (did I mention it was 3 am? Everything is dire at
3 am.) I knew there was no way Bryan would risk diving on the prop in
these conditions. But he was more determined than I and we spent a
few minutes revving the engine in forward and reverse until the line
finally broke free.

I took off my gear and crawled back
into bed, trying to let go of the adrenaline. It took me a while to
fall asleep but when I woke in the morning, we were through the
Carquinez Strait, headed back toward SF Bay, and Bryan was grinning.

“I thought we were going to stop when the tide turned,” I said.
“We never slowed down too much, so I just kept going,” he
answered. He'd already been up for 24 hours but we really needed to
get north as fast as possible, so we decided to try to run all the
way out through the Golden Gate instead of waiting for the afternoon
ebb.

Fog at the gate kept both of us on watch.

Every 2 minutes, our
new foghorn announced our existence to the other ships at sea. We
stayed out of the shipping channels and watched the fog give way to a
smooth ride.

Bryan got a few hours of rest while the girls and I kept
watch. Later in the afternoon, the winds and seas picked up again and
after his night watch, he just stayed up for most of the next day to
bring us safely into Fort Bragg. We'd intentionally skipped this
small harbor on our way down; the bar was notoriously rough and
narrow with a channel so shallow, big seas can knock your boat
against the bottom. As soon as a scratchy bar report came in on our
radio, we listened hard, trying to figure out if the entrance would
be safe for us in the high swell. At first, we only heard the bad
news: “8-10 foot rollers...” If we had to surf down 10 foot waves
in the middle of an 80 ft wide channel with underwater rocks on both
sides, well...nope. We'd just turn around a head back to Bodega Bay.
But we really didn't want to lose all those hard-won miles. A couple
hours before we reached the entrance, I called the Coast Guard for a
personalized report. The boats they use for rescues and their other
work have the same draft (require the same depth) as LiLo and they
clarified the bar report a bit. Yes, there were 8-10 foot rollers in
the channel but in near the jetty tips, the waves would only be 1-2
feet. We gritted our teeth through the last few rough miles and then
navigated the tricky bar without a problem.

Well-lit range markers
helped us line up our entrance just right. If we got off to one side,
the light would show red; to the other, green. I stood on the
companionway steps and peered out through the dodger window calling,
“White, white, white, red, red, RED, white, white, green, white...”
while Bryan fought with the tiller to keep the boat straight to the
swell. In only a few minutes, the seas began to calm down and then we
were inside the jetties and motoring up the beautiful Noyo River.

We spent a day and a half in Fort
Bragg.

You know you're back in the northwest when...

There was pizza and grocery shopping and bumming a ride to the
gas station. There were walks on the tree-lined lanes and a narrow
escape from an angry baby skunk. There were reassuring conversations
with the commercial fishermen who had been waiting 4 weeks to round
the cape. There was a visit to the Coast Guard station to gather
information and offer our thanks (These were the only Coast Guard personnel we
met on this trip, thankfully. When one travels by sea, one hopes the
Coast Guard remains a supportive, anonymous voice on the radio since
it usually takes a crisis to meet them in person.) And then there
were a few anxious moments reenacting the bar crossing in reverse. The Coast Guard boat had just returned from checking the bar and, as we drove by their station in the narrow river, one Coastie called over, "Where are you headed today?" It was more than just friendly conversation. They knew the conditions and wanted to know if they would need to come out after us for a rescue. When we hollered back that we were just heading up to Shelter Cove, not trying for a cape rounding just yet, he visibly relaxed before wishing us well. We motored past the flashing rough-bar warning lights and even though I knew the conditions were just rough, not dangerous, they still gave me a moment's pause. I stood on the steps again, looking backwards this time, keeping an
eye on the range lights while Bryan stood at the tiller, facing the
steep oncoming waves.

We spent the day running up to Shelter
Cove, just south of Cape Mendocino, and anchored in the bay for the
night.

We pulled in one last weather report—yes, the cape
conditions were still supposed to calm down soon—and set the alarm
for 4 am. Whether it was the rolly anchorage or the worry about the
cape, neither Bryan nor I got much sleep that night. We were up by 4,
hauling up the anchor and heading for the cape. For several months,
my parents had been tentatively planning a trip to the Redwoods to
meet us. During our uncertain days in the Delta, they'd regularly
been in touch to offer encouragement and support. We planned and
rescheduled and gave up and planned again. They gave up hotel
reservations and made new ones and kept clients and piano students on
call. A lot was riding on this cape rounding!

We got to the cape around 9 am but even
with the calmer winds, the seas were still some of the worst we've
had. We'd timed the rounding to coincide with a favorable tide, so we
had a bit of a push from the current. Still, we spent a few hours
wondering if we were going to make it. The forecast had predicted
lighter conditions on the northern portion of the cape so I kept
checking our location on the chart and wondering if the seas were
smoother or if my imagination had just gotten better. Soon there
wasn't any doubt; by early afternoon we'd broken through into the
smoothest conditions since southern California.

We'd told my parents we hoped to make
it into Crescent City by 11am, maybe 9 if we were lucky. But we made
fabulous time and even had to slow down outside the entrance to wait
for dawn. By 5am, we could see the rocks guarding the bay (Yay for
northern latitude sailing! Yay for the summer solstice!) and as Bryan
steered us toward the outer buoy, I made an excited phone call to my
early-bird father. “We'll be there in an hour!”

We still had almost 400 miles to go. We
weren't even back in Oregon yet. But as we walked up the dock to meet
the familiar white van it seemed the transition home had begun.

A friend recently asked me how I was
going to handle returning to boring life on land. I know what she
means and I wasn't at all offended by the question. But I think my
life on land was, and will once again be, anything but boring. She would likely
even say the same about her life, filled as it is with satisfying
work, loving family, interesting travel, and an adorable grandson.
Her life is not boring because she is not a boring person and refuses
to be bored. (Being bored is for boring people.) My return
may—hopefully will—bring a little more predictability. I'm ready
for a little more predictability! But I am coming back to family I
love, a summer of unpacking and camping and reading and using a
dishwasher and showering whenever I feel like it. And then the new
school year and new opportunities for work and creativity arise.
There will still be wildlife sightings, even if chickadees are more
common than humpbacks. I will still encounter people of (not-so) rare
generosity and graciousness, find deep joy in spending time with my
family, and be surprised by beauty in my daily world. I know this
because this is the life I chose to live before I left, the attitude
I took to sea with me, the intention I bring back home.

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About Me

I'm trading in the life I love, with easy access to friends, family, the internet, my baby grand piano, and my washing machine. In return, I'm anticipating adventure as my husband, our 2 middle-school daughters, and I set sail for a year on our 32' Islander, LiLo. Writing here is one of the ways I pay attention to the world.